Now a dingo screaming "STELLA!", that I'd pay to see
Thursday, Aug. 17, 2006 at 9:31 a.m.
On this day in 1980, Dingos snatch baby Azaria from a campground near Ayers Rock, Australia. Her mother, Lindy Chamberlain, is later convicted of murder and spends three years in prison, but the conviction is ultimately overturned. Apparently there have been a number of baby/dingo incidents over the years, the dingo not differentiating animals from humans. (The fact that if you rearrange the letters in LINDY CHAMBERLAIN you get CHILDREN BY ANIMAL is just a coincidence.)
Unfortunately, now that 26 years has passed, randomly shouting, �Maybe dingos et yer baby!� doesn�t have the same effect as it did back then. Furthermore, how many people really know why the name �Stella� needs to be caterwauled while ripping your t-shirt in the rain? Anyone? Bueller?
Yet we all get the �Bueller� reference. SIGH.
I NEED TO VENT. Just thought I�d warn you.
So, I am at work and I have one of those lovely summer colds. I am nice and cranky. However, when some stupid shit goes down, it don�t matter the level of crankiness:
We have a new trainee, and A is the designated trainer. Supposedly, this new trainee will be learning how to handle the phone calls and eventually, the emails. Because that is what we do. We are the call center for technical support for this company. The job is not hard, but there�s a lot of information to retain. I call it �trivia�, because you only need most of this knowledge once a month or so. Anyhoo, A spent the first two days giving the trainee the History Of Our Company and the Back Story Of How Our Jobs Came to Be, including the apocryphal People Who Used to Be Here Seven Years Ago Who Were All Useless.
And they never touched a stinking phone for two days.
So the Scotvalkyrie, the happy asshole with a cold over here, has to answer all the phone calls and process all the emails while A is giving an eight-hour-long history lesson.
The fuck???
Then DS comes in at noon, and ostensibly, he now comes in at noon to help with the brunt of the phone calls. However, D, my erstwhile �manager� told him yesterday that he really didn�t need to be on the phone until 2 or so, after he had completed his �other duties� as facility manager, tasks which take him all of about 7 minutes to do, so he�s sitting there chatting with his girlfriend on his cell. And getting paid for it.
Meanwhile, the Scotvalkyrie (see description above) is still answering all the phones and all the emails by herself, while, over the course of the day, four people have merrily sat on their asses. And then the Scotvalkyrie has to ask permission to run to the ladies� room.
Again, the fuck??
This job is not difficult. And I have had much worse jobs, believe you me, jobs where I had to pull myself out of bed every single morning and stop crying. I was begging the Hubster every morning not to make me go, when I had that old job. When I got fired laid off, I jumped up with a whoop and shook everybody�s hand. I gave a gleeful hug to the asshole who had fired me.
But stupid goes with every job, ne?
But when you don�t feel good, yet you can�t go home because the supposed �manager� flat-out refuses to take over the shift for you, then, well, fuck.
And the poor Hubster, he thought he was doing me a favor. He thinks I should mutiny in general, but I have a hard time doing that because, well, dammit, the perks in this job really outweigh the cons. The major con is that if someone gets sick everything goes flooey. Because of the manager (see above). But anyhoo, the Hubster thought he would do me a favor and let me sleep in this morning. The problem was that I hadn�t done anything to cover my shift today, because I knew for a fact that I wouldn�t be able to. So I had to rush to get to work this morning, once I finished tongue lashing (and not in a good way) the Hubster.
Poor guy. He knows that I get really cranky when I�m sick, though. That�s why I bought him M&Ms yesterday when I bought a slew of cold meds for myself at the jolly Tar-jay.
I did, however, manage to get my shift covered for tomorrow. The summary is, I can�t be sick on a Tuesday or Thursday. Only M-W-F.
HLULGUALUGLUALUGHALUALUGHALLUG.
And that, my friends, is a tribute to Jerk City, which started publishing on this day in 1998. Non sequiturs, gay jokes, and slobbering noises will never be the same again.
I�ll tell you what never changes though, and that�s the glee I get from gravestones containing questionable names:
Squee!